Expert: Ethereum Smart Contracts Are Expensive and Predictable

Ethereum smart contracts could be a problem, an expert has revealed. Although Ethereum has had a unique advantage over other blockchain projects. It has focused on creating an environment that fosters the creation of decentralized applications. Ethereum’s premise can be likened to the creation of a “world computer” where any developer can deploy snippets of code, which self executes forever. However, Keir Finlow -Bates has news that should enlighten the crypto-verse on the potential costs of developing a smart contract.

“Submitting a smart contract to Ethereum costs millions of times more per instruction than running the same code on a typical cloud server. So there has to be a really good reason to write a smart contract code rather than normal code”.

Smart contracts have over the years been viewed as the multipurpose silver bullet that will solve all problems, at negligible costs. In the future, this smart contract utopia could become a reality. At the moment, however, there are limitations to blockchains that make them an expensive and challenging to develop solutions for problems. These challenges make it very expensive for medium and small-sized ventures to implement the contracts.

The High Costs of a Smart Contract

The cost of developing a smart contract has skyrocketed due to the demand for developers. These self-executing codes on the blockchain are a marvel. They can automatically enact the terms of an agreement between the parties. These agreements have predefined rules and are unbreakable. Smart contracts are also deterministic.

Consequently, the same output is generated from a given input. Of this Keir Finlow-Bates, the founder and CEO of Chainfrog, says “random numbers in smart contracts don’t generally make sense.” However, they can be implemented if desired.

This innovative way to handle tech-based businesses can be employed in a myriad of uses. For instance, there are blockchain-based solutions for managing escrow management or distributing insurance rebates on time.

To calculate the costs of designing a contact on Ethereum, you need to estimate it in “Gas.” In Ethereum, “Gas” is the fuel that powers the blockchain network. It is used as a metric for quantifying the costs of hosting Dapps or deploying smart contracts.

Deploying, Testing Smart Contracts Is Expensive

Its simple math, where to come up with a transaction fee, the gas limit is multiplied by the gas price. The final amount is then divided amongst the miners. Just like any other profit-oriented business, miners will be fussy and go for projects with a higher gas price. The basic unit of gas is known as Gwei or Wei.

The Rinkeby testnet has an old (2017) calculation the pegs the costs of the deployment of a smart contract and its associated costs to $0.08. The ETH price was low then and has risen, so the value now could be half of the Rinkeby testnet figure. The major costs, however, come from auditing and tests.

Consequently, a typical smart contract could cost $7,500. An elaborate one, on the other hand, could shoot up by as much as $45,000. More substantial organizations could charge higher than $100,000 for specialized knowledge. There are also high charges of deployment of the smart contract on the main net. The complexity of the contract will determine its final price.

Bill Gates, is alleged to have said, “No one will need more than 637KB of memory for a personal computer. 640KB ought to be enough for anybody,” in 1981. It can, therefore, be safely assumed that while smart contract costs are out of reach at the moment, technology is slowly but surely catching up. Eventually, this innovation will not only be accessible and easy to use, but cheap.